A TOWN of just 568 inhabitants an hour’s drive south east of Madrid has become more than £100 million richer thanks to Spain’s famous El Gordo lottery.

School girls call out the first prize of El Gordo lottery and lucky winners celebrating

A women’s association in Brea de Tajo struck lucky with the top prize after 10 years buying the same number.

Association president Antonia Reyes bought several tickets bearing the number one winning number - 66513 - at a lottery office in the Spanish capital for locals who sold them on to friends and relatives.

More than 300 decimos - tickets worth £340,000 each - ended up in the hands of villagers and a lucky few in neighbouring populations who paid Antonia a £1.70 fee on top of the ticket price to help fund the association’s running costs.

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Several winners were still nursing hangovers after hours dancing in the street and quaffing champagne.

I’m sure the banks won’t take long to ring us and promise us the earth with our money

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Ms Reyes celebrated by organising a New Year’s Eve trip to Benidorm.

Antonela Basca, a day centre worker who has been living in Brea de Tajo for 14 years and was in debt after splitting from her husband, said: “When I got a phone call to say we’d won the top prize I couldn’t believe it.

“I was at a friend’s house. I was going through a really bad time of it and was struggling to find enough money to put food on the table.”

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A lucky winner holds a photocopy of the winning ticket she bought

The 39-year-old Romanian immigrant, who will now get £340,000 for the decimo she bought for herself, her new partner and her jobless 19-year-old son, told Spanish newspaper El Pais: “I’m going to carry on working because I love what I do which is helping others.”

Town mayor Rafael Barcala Gomez is also £340,000 richer thanks to a decimo he was gifted and described himself as the “happiest mayor on Earth.”

The women’s association kept one of the decimos for itself and is now going to put it towards a trip to Paris for its 26 members.

Charity worker Maria del Mar Salcedo described the money she had won with her decimo as a lifesaver because her husband was out of work and they got by with help from their daughter.

The only bank in the town, which has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the area, closed recently after Santander bosses decided it didn’t have enough customers to justify the cost of the branch’s upkeep.

The mayor’s pleas to regional governors ahead of the closure fell on deaf ears.

One local said after being blessed by El Gordo’s top prize: “I’m sure the banks won’t take long to ring us and promise us the earth with our money.”

The number 66513 appeared on 1,650 tickets in Spain’s annual Christmas lottery.

Workers at a retirement home also bought tickets with the top prize-winning number, all sold from one lottery office in the modest Acacias neighbourhood of Madrid.

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An official empties a drum at the start of the Spain's El Gordo lottery

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